Today in criminal convictions, it is prevalent and necessary that there is evidence collected in order to hopefully find and put away the people who committed the crimes. Serology is an important factor that allows this to occur. Serology is the study and identification of bodily fluids such as blood salvia and semen in order to proceed in criminal investigations and legal processes. Blood, saliva, and semen can be readily found in sexual assault and homicide cases. In the case of Dennis Maher, serology is something that should have been considered in order to make a conviction. Instead, none of the evidence that was collected was tested to exclude him, and he was put away in jail based on eyewitness identifications. The crimes that occurred in 1983 ended with Dennis Maher, a solider for the United States, being charged and convicted for rape, assault with intent to rape, assault & battery, and aggravated rape in the year of 1984 based on Eyewitness testimony (NEIP, 2011).
Three rapes were reported in the 1983 in the state of Massachusetts. The first rape was reported on August 17, 1983 a women by the name of Marilyn Goss. She was raped by an intruder while she spent the night at the Casa Manor Motel in Ayer, Massachusetts (Stearns, 2006). On November 16, 1983 a woman was attacked while she was walking home in the city Lowell, MA. A man she did not know approached her, tried to converse with her, and then forced her into a nearby yard, where the man sexually assaulted her (Know the Cases: Dennis Maher). On November 17, 1983, about twenty four hours after the other attack in Lowell, MA, a different woman was harshly shoved to the ground by a man who produced a knife. The woman was luckily enough to escape the man after a struggle...
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...cap of the sperm pink and the nucleus red, and a picroindigocarmine dye, which turns the mid piece of the sperm blue and the tail of the sperm green. The stained samples would then be placed under a microscope and hopefully spermatozoa would be present so that DNA testing could be performed.
As stated before, in the Maher case spermatozoa were found in underwear of the rape victim in Lowell, and also spermatozoa were located in the rape kit on the vaginal swab slide that was developed at the time of the crime. In both the spermatozoa were found, collected, and DNA testing was completed on the sample to determine if Dennis Maher committed the crime.
Works Cited
http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/Dennis_Maher.php
http://www.newenglandinnocence.org/2011/dennis-maher/
http://pacer.mad.uscourts.gov/dc/cgi-bin/recentops.pl?filename=stearns/pdf/maher56f.pdf
Rape is a hidden epidemic that affects many lives world wide. It is a problem that is so terrifying and uncomfortable that people do not talk about it. John Krakauer, author of Missoula, focuses on this issue of rape in the college town of Missoula, Montana. His focus is specifically on the case of Allison Huguet and Beau Donaldson. As the progression of Allison 's case continues we learn of more and more rape cases that happened to women on this same campus. A majority of women do not report these cases, we later learn as Krakauer continues through Allison 's case, because reporting and pursuing the case would be giving their life away. [4] Of course Allison decides to go through the trails of Beau Donaldson, however it is obvious that it is extremely difficult to convict someone with little evidence. As hard of a read as Missoula
electrophoresis. The way the PCR method works is by first mixing a solution containing the
At 5:00 a.m. on September 29, 1987, an unknown intruder broke into a 15-year-old girl’s bedroom. He began to assault her until the mother of the girl discovered the intruder on top of her. The man then fled.
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McClintock J. T. (2014). Forensic Analysis of Biological Evidence: A Laboratory Guide for Serological and DNA Typing. CRC Press.
And I am not a private investigator or the real life version of Sherlock Holmes, or at least I don’t pretend to be. But, yes, every day for the past month that I've been assigned this project for my English class I've been trying to figure out what went wrong with DNA evidence and rape kits that has led to wrongful
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...vitz, M. (2009). Forensic psychology: Emerging topics and expanding roles. American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 52(1), 71-71-72.
Gaensslen, R. E., Harris, H A., & Lee, H. (2008). Introduction to Forensic Science and Criminalistics. New York, NY: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. .
Saferstein, R. (2009). Forensic science: From the crime scene to the crime lab. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall
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